The present invention generally relates to methods and equipment for performing size reduction operations on products, including but not limited to food products.
Various types of equipment are known for reducing the size of products, for example, slicing, strip-cutting, dicing, shredding, and/or granulating food products. A particular example is the DiversaCut 2110® manufactured by Urschel Laboratories, aspects of which are disclosed in patent documents including U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,472,297 and 3,521,688. The DiversaCut 2110® is adapted to uniformly slice, strip-cut, and/or dice a wide variety of vegetables, fruits, and meat products at high production capacities.
A portion of a DiversaCut machine is depicted in FIG. 1 as an apparatus 10 comprising a casing (or cutting head) 12 that encloses an impeller 14. Food product 16 is delivered through a feed hopper (not shown) to the impeller 14 as the impeller 14 rotates on a horizontal axis within the casing 12. Centrifugal force holds the product 16 against the inner wall of the casing 12 as paddles 20 of the impeller 14 carry the product 16 past a slicing knife 22 mounted on the casing 12 and oriented roughly parallel to the axis of the impeller 14. An adjustable slice gate 18 located upstream of the slicing knife 22 allows the product 16 to move outward across the edge of the knife 22 to produce a single slice 24 from each individual product 16 with each rotation of the impeller 14. The thickness of each slice 24 is determined by the distance between the cutting edge of the slicing knife 22 and the adjacent edge of the slice gate 18. In the embodiment shown, the slices 24 enter circular knives 26 as they radially emerge from the slicing knife 22, with the result that each slice 24 is cut into multiple parallel strips 28 as the slice 24 continues to travel under the momentum originally induced by the impeller 14. If diced, shredded, or granulated food products are desired, the strips 28 then pass directly into a rotating knife assembly 30 equipped with crosscut knives 32 that make a transverse cut to produce a reduced-size product 34 (e.g., diced), which is then discharged from the apparatus 10 through a discharge chute 36.
As evident from FIG. 1, the circular and crosscut knives 26 and 32 are located outside the casing 12, and therefore engage the food product 16 after slices 24 cut from the product 16 have been produced by the slicing knife 22. The slices 24, strips 28, and product 34 are all examples of reduced-size products that can be produced with a DiverseCut machine of the type represented by the apparatus 10 depicted in FIG. 1.
Although the above-described methods and equipment are useful for many size reduction applications, there is an ongoing desire to perform size reduction operations on various products of different types and shapes, including but not limited to food products. A particular example is an elongate food product (i.e, an aspect ratio (width to length) of less than one) that preferably undergoes orientation during its delivery to a slicing knife so that the slicing knife can make a longitudinal cut through the product. Notable but nonlimiting examples include the types of cuts made in green beans, such as French-cut beans, European-style cut beans. etc.